I wanna be Dark Oppressor, but can I do everything at once?

[Tomppa]

Okay, so I have a mortal, who aspires to become a DO.

No skills so far have been purchased, except repair item (because originally I planned to grind the repair badges).

I want to do enchanting, and at first I thought I might buy the aura spells for my enchanting purposes - They would also augment my own attacks. Since I had repair, I considered getting melee tree and repair tree. Turns out this is very CP intensive, though.

Then I thought that maybe I should just take the HtH tree - If I'm grinding repair badges, it doesn't matter if my damage output is poor before I reach lvl 20 and get the horns, because I'll be leveling through repair anyway, right? This way I could also forget about smithing/other repair child skills, but it does leave the badge/xp grinding horribly slow.

Third option would be to forgo both of these, and instead take an auto-hit spell to deal damage. I could also save CP then by taking cheap T2 spells instead of auras, because spells don't benefit from auras. But then the whole build idea is kinda scrapped. Then again, I could then take taint spell for that +2 dmg, to enable an autohit spell (T3 variant, possibly combined with that -2 soak aura) to allow me to grind ice. If I go for aura spells, I likely won't have enough CP for taint spell, so the variety of weapon enchantments is also a question. Do I want Fire/cold/acid/death, or just one of those + unholy?

Another question is: Do I really want to take DH? And Soul Vampire? If I plan to enchant, should I also take alchemy and transmutation, or rely on others to provide the potions? Could I drop the DH and/or Vampire, and rely on others to bring me ice for transmutation?

So -
1. Auras and melee, or auras and Horns, or no auras and spells, or no auras and no spells and no Vampire.

2. Soul vampire + transmutation? Or Soul vampire, but no alchemy at all? Or Transmutation, but drop DH and/or Soul vampire?

Tap the Ley Line is also a mystery. Do I really need 3 ways to recover MP (DH, Ice, TLL) or can I drop either Ice or TLL (or Ice + DH), in which case again the need for Ice for Transmutation might be a problem?

Do I need to be able to go over my maximum MP to fully enchant stuff? Can this be achieved with DH or Ice, or do I require TLL for this single purpose?

As you can probably see, I kinda wanted to do everything myself (create ice, transmute it, turn it into a potion, enchant, while benefitting from the aura spells for damage) but as it turns out, this may just be too CP heavy to pull off. I need to drop -something-.
_________________
"I am your Slave
And you will Reward me
For I shall be Faithful."
(That's from Dracula, by Stoker.)

[Kiralio]

Don't worry about dealing damage, you're never going to be good at it anyways. You can ignore it completely or just take whatever involves the least CP / least maintenance. I went with firearms on my DO Nahash but that's mostly because I have a bunch of badges and can afford to make some semi-frivolous choices.

Get the utility skills to do alchemy and enchantments, and if you want to contribute directly to raids, take Intimidating Aura -> Terrifying Aura and ideally pair off with a Lich.

Dark Heart is good, Soul Vampire is next to worthless, if you want to stockpile mana just brew magic recovery potions; you only really need soul ice to make cold affinity potions which aren't in high demand. I used to lump Life Vampire in with Soul but I'm actually thinking of taking it on Nahash just because sometimes the desecration RNG won't give you a blood ice for weeks, and unholy affinity is much more useful for enchanting and buffing than cold.

e: TLL is getting nerfed as we speak so I would be very careful relying on it; I don't have much experience with it, though. In any case you don't ever need to go over your maximum MP for enchantments, you just need some combination of (not all of) high level, Cosmic Affinity, and whichever planar guild membership gives you the appropriate MP discount.

[Tomppa]

After realising that seal magic gives a 20% discount, and the planar build gives another 15%, it dawned on me that max enchanting is possible at lvl 20, without needing TLL or cosmic affinity.

Thanks goes to EagleWiz for pointing this out ^.^
_________________
"I am your Slave
And you will Reward me
For I shall be Faithful."
(That's from Dracula, by Stoker.)

[klapaucius]

Some thoughts about some of the things you mentioned:

I took thrown weapons on my DO, pretty happy with it to be honest. The DO weapon trees are ok, but at 90cp each quite a big investment. An enchanted sling provides plenty of damage for the purposes of generating ice, and I'd rather use that 90cp maxing out the auras. Cheap and efficient.

DH is nice. I would suggest it. If you're in a moderate sized faction, it should be a better mp income than TLL. Soul vampire is not a viable source of mp - it costs 5mp to make ice, and one ice only gives 5mp. You're not likely to get enough damage to make 2 ice per attack, so it's essentially storing mp, not gaining it.

However, having the potential to make alchemy ingredients by hunting is really quite nice. One of the vampire skills + alchemy and transmutation is a good combo, albeit very expensive cp wise. In the spirit of cooperation, I took a vampire skill but not alchemy and dump ices en masse on the faction alchemists. I think they like it.

You will be able to enchant to the cap eventually if you do at least one of: buy seal magic, buy cosmic affinity or join the cabal planar guild (I believe cabal affects enchanting, but I'm not 100% sure). Any one of these should do the trick. I have taint spell and enchant, I'll probably get one elemental damage type eventually.

You can do everything, but you'll probably have to spend your T3 cp buying spells and T2 skills for enchanting. I'd rather rely on division of labour and max out the auras

Killing with spells as a DO would be a hassle, in my opinion. You can't generate huge amounts of mp easily and you have no skills to reduce mp cost or increase damage other than taint spell, which really isn't very efficient.

Don't see much point buying all the aura spells. I'd rather have 1 and get all the synergy spells to increase it's duration.

[Tomppa]

Thanks for the input.

While playing around in the planner, I came up with this:

1 10 Repair Item
--
7 10 Hand to Hand Combat
7 20 Martial Arts
7 30 Advanced Martial Arts
--
10 0 Desecrate
10 20 Spellcraft
10 20 Spell Combat
11 10 Sense Magic
11 10 Seeking Hand
--
16 20 Alchemy
16 40 Alchemical Transmutation
16 20 Dark Heart
16 20 Soul Vampire
16 -10 Items Repaired
17 -13 13 Exploration Badges
17 14 Acrid Vapors
17 12 Frost Charge
17 11 Flame Charge
17 6 Necrotic Ray
--
20 -20 20 Exploration Badges
20 0 Curse of Blood
20 30 Leathern Wings
20 30 Enchant Item
21 60 Seal Magic
22 30 Caustic Horns
23 0 -- Saved --
24 60 Corrosive Horns
25 0 -- Saved --
26 60 Intimidating Aura
27 0 -- Saved --
28 60 Agony Curse
29 20 Life Vampire
30 40 Taint Spell

(Don't mind the levels, I just spammed "level up" to make it easier to read)
In short: I'll level up to 16 with repairing (to get that 10 cp badge) and then hopefully level through reading/alchemy. I get all of acid/fire/cold/death as potential damage type enchantments, as well as accuracy/defense at lvl 20 when I get to enchanting. Lvl 21 I should be able to enchant stuff to the max. Lvl 24 I should be able to produce my own soul ice for transmutation purposes. Lvl 26 and 28 aura and curse for support, and at 29 and 30 I get the ability to both produce blood ice for unholy potions, and use them in tainting.

I suppose I could get more of the aura things for upgraded support, but so far, this sounds pretty nice.
I do take 3 auras (for the freedom of choice) in this, but swapping 2 or all 3 of them would only save me 14 or 21 cp. I technically have 7 cp badges not counted for, but even with them, I can't really get anything interesting for the CP, so I think the auras are kinda fine.

Thoughts?
_________________
"I am your Slave
And you will Reward me
For I shall be Faithful."
(That's from Dracula, by Stoker.)

[Kiralio]

Skip Agony Curse, skip the Auras, get Terrifying Aura. The defense debuff is a much bigger deal than the soak debuff, although both help.

e: Remember that supplemental damage does not count towards the 10 damage minimum for triggering life/soul vampire. Negative soak should, though, in theory.

If you want to diversify enchantment damage types, pick up the minimum CP spells instead. You don't really need anything besides Unholy + a single alternative for transcended characters to use, though, and that's assuming your faction doesn't also have a Conduit.

Again, don't take Soul Vampire, it's bad.

Taking Taint Spell that late means you won't be able to do Unholy enchantments until level 30. That is also the only reason to take Taint Spell, it kind of sucks as a combat skill.

Seeking Hand is probably overkill (don't Corrosive Horns reach 75% to hit with just the HtH tree?) but I guess not too hard to make room for. If I recall correctly, it does not affect Dark Heart success rates.

No character, under any circumstances, is complete without Search. This goes double for alchemists.

[klapaucius]

This is from a raiding first, supporting second perspective:

Soul vampire has been the defiler skill I have enjoyed the most, so clearly your mileage may vary. Life vampire is arguably stronger, but in my opinion no evil faction is complete without at least one character with each.

Aside from that I agree Kiralio.

[Tomppa]

[Tomppa]

I could swap Soul Vampire -> Life Vampire, and drop

11 10 Seeking Hand
17 12 Frost Charge
17 11 Flame Charge
17 6 Necrotic Ray

for a total gain of 39 CP, plus 1 badge, to get Taint spell at T2. This would release 60 CP to be used in T3, which isn't quite enough to get that Terrifying aura...

I suppose I could drop leathern wings to get that missing 30 CP, but I'll probably hate myself for it later >.>

EDIT: Ooh! I realized that I have a lifetime books read badge collected, which means that I can get 2 other damage types. If I collect the missing 6 badges as well, I'll get either all dmg types, or 1 + another aura. For example, frost charge + firestrike, total 16 cp
_________________
"I am your Slave
And you will Reward me
For I shall be Faithful."
(That's from Dracula, by Stoker.)